Wednesday, March 25, 2009

flowers 101: symmetrical bouquet

i am really disappointed. i planned on providing a full photo-tutorial of this weeks arrangement and my lovely phone died shortly after the second step. ugh! i guess you will just have to be creative and fill in the 30 steps i didn't get pictures of. :)

step 1: pick your straightest flower to determine the highest point of the arrangement. (again, carnations were our skeleton, but this would work well with roses or other strong-stemmed flowers. it all depends on your budget.)

step 2: use the same flower from step one to create the triangle skeleton of the arrangement. insert one flower on opposite sides, parallel to the table. this step creates the boundaries of the arrangement. nothing will go outside of these three flowers.

step 3: because the carnations acted as the skeleton of this bouquet, 3 additional carnations were added to the middle in order to create uniformity and the desired rounded flow we're going for.

step 4: small pieces of greenery were added to cover the oasis. for this particular arrangement, i used leather, myrtle, and either pittosporum or rhamnus (i can't remember!). greenery is never taller than the flowers. remember, when customers buy a bouquet they are buying the flowers, not the greenery.

step 5: two tulips are added where holes exist in the bouquet.

step 6: the focal flower is added. in this arrangement it's a rose.

step 7: lastly, the filler flower is added, which in this case was aster, or novi belguim, september flower, monte casino...whatever you wanna call it. (i used white aster and purple in my arrangement. i started with just the white and it felt so boring so i added one stalk of purple for a small punch!) sporadically place the aster to fill in the "empty" spaces.

step 8: a finished arrangement.


i had to include two close-ups of what i thought were by far the best flowers in the arrangement. my husband and i have decided that parrot-tulips might possibly be our new favorite flower. don't they look like little dragons?


hopefully next week i will have a full step-by-step (with pictures) tutorial of our easter arrangements for you. thanks for stopping by and happy arranging!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for sharing the tutorial--I love living vicariously through you! ; ) Honestly though, you're inspiring me to find a local flower arrangement class! So fun.

BTW, I've never seen a parrot tulip before...that flower is crazy looking!